28 THE GREEK SCHOOL PHILOSOPHY. 



the universe; according to Thales, water was the 

 origin of all things, according to Anaximenes, air ; 

 and Heraclitus considered fire as the essential prin- 

 ciple of the universe. It has been conjectured, 

 with great plausibility, that this tendency to give 

 to their philosophy the form of a cosmogony, was 

 owing to the influence of the poetical cosmogonies 

 and theogonies which had been produced and ad- 

 mired at a still earlier age. Indeed, such wide and 

 ambitious doctrines as those which have been men- 

 tioned, were better suited to the dim magnificence 

 of poetry, than to the purpose of a philosophy which 

 was to bear the sharp scrutiny of reason. When 

 we speak of the principles of things, the term, even 

 now, is very ambiguous and indefinite in, its import, 

 but how much more was that the case in the first 

 attempts to use such abstractions ! The term which 

 is commonly used in this sense (apxn)> signified at 

 first the beginning ; and in its early philosophical 

 applications implied some obscure mixed reference 

 to the mechanical, chemical, organic, and historical 

 causes of the visible state of things, besides the 

 theological views which at this period were only just 

 beginning to be separated from the physical. Hence 

 we are not to be surprised if the sources from which 

 the opinions of this period appear to be derived are 

 rather vague suggestions and casual analogies, than 

 any reasons which will bear examination. Aristotle 

 conjectures, with considerable probability, that the 

 doctrine of Thales, according to which water was 



